Trump and the F Word of Politics

Plus, Joe Rogan makes an appearance, and the Harris campaign gets cringy.

After John Kelly sat down for interviews with the Atlantic and the New York Times to go on record calling Donald Trump a fascist, the debate last week fell out in predictable ways, with Vice President Harris also calling Trump a fascist, Democrats and Never-Trumpers subtweeting Kelly’s comments as much as they could, Republicans coming out to deny charges of fascism, and Trumpist shills denouncing Kelly’s character. 

Kelly also confirmed for the first time (on the record) the allegations that Trump had called American soldiers “suckers.” He said many other things, including that Trump had praised Hitler’s generals and that Trump couldn’t understand why government officials swore an oath to the Constitution (rather than to him). 

Even many anti-Trump conservatives came out hard against the fascist line, but it’s worth dwelling on Kelly’s overall assessment, rather than one charged word. Whether or not we agree that Donald Trump is a fascist, Kelly’s comments rang true. Trump has no respect for the American Constitution or American sacrifice. He would prefer the government be run like a company, with himself as the CEO (which could either be a harmless nod to the virtues of business leadership, or an idea reminiscent of Curtis Yarvin’s call for a national CEO-as-dictator).  

News also broke last week that Mitch McConnell called Donald Trump “a ‘sleazeball,’ a ‘narcissist’ and [claimed] he is ‘stupid as well as being ill-tempered” in a new, forthcoming biography. McConnell described the former president as “not very smart, irascible, nasty, just about every quality you would not want somebody to have,” and said of the MAGA movement, “I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan viewed and he wouldn’t recognize today…” and has “done a lot of damage to our party’s image and our ability to compete.”

McConnell still endorsed Trump, even as he clearly hopes Trump will lose while Republicans keep the house. He doesn’t think Trump is a fascist, but that doesn’t mean he thinks Trump is fit to be president. I wonder whether, even after endorsing him, McConnell will vote for Trump. 

National Review largely condemned Kelly’s “fascist” comment and Harris’s repetition of it, and I agreed with much of what Rich Lowry and the other editors said. But I still felt that this was leaving something out. When the left called Bush and Romney and Reagan and McCain fascists, it was facially absurd. When the left calls Trump a fascist, we have to pause for a second to think about it before we can conclude that Donald Trump probably isn’t a fascist. That we have to seriously consider the possibility is by definition disqualifying. John Kelly isn’t Elizabeth Warren. He isn’t Adam Kinzinger. It’s worth taking his assessment of Trump seriously. We can’t just dismiss it out of hand. Trump’s defenders argue that this talk of fascism is dangerous and will only lead to more assassination attempts, but it’s worth pointing out that Harris wasn’t the first candidate in this race to call her opponent a fascist. Donald Trump was. 

I agreed with Noah Rothman when he said that a fascist wouldn’t go to McDonalds and hand out fries. But I agreed even more with Charlie Cooke when he said that just because Trump isn’t a fascist doesn’t mean Trump isn’t a threat. 

Already in 1945, George Orwell was writing that the word “fascist” had lost all meaning save as an epithet indicating someone the speaker didn’t like. Perhaps this was partially due to the mainstream international left implicitly accepting Stalin’s propaganda that any socialist whose loyalty was not to the Soviet Union was a fascist. But the word once referred to a particular ideology, and I have a strong preference for using words clearly, especially in cases like this one. 

The greatest disagreement between the national socialists and the Soviets was on the question of the nation. Hitler hated capitalists and the bourgeoisie, but he also hated the internationalism of Marx. He wasn’t interested in the workers of the world uniting, but in the workers of Germany uniting. 

Mussolini’s Italy was often compared to Lenin’s USSR in the early years, but Mussolini was never a communist. His pragmatism (and his capital-P Pragmatism – Mussolini was a fan of William James) allowed for deviations from pure socialism for the sake of political power, although he held fast to his socialist principles until his dying breath. 

I don’t believe Donald Trump is a fascist, because he isn’t a socialist. He isn’t ideological, and I seriously doubt whether he has ever read a book, including The Art of the Deal. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have dangerous tendencies which will inevitably result in further shocks to our constitutional system should he be allowed near power again. It doesn’t mean he won’t take actions which will be inimical to the fabric of American civil society. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t surround himself with people who might, in fact, be ideological in precisely the wrong ways. I’m willing to say that I don’t believe Donald Trump is a fascist... 

But I’m not sure whether I can give J.D. Vance the benefit of that doubt. On economics, he’s to the left of Elizabeth Warren, and he seems to have a fondness for using the power of the state to punish enemies, seize assets, and nationalize industries. Vance’s cultural populism, nationalism, left-wing economics, and grievance-stoking demagoguery strike me as at least within the part of the Venn Diagram where fascism resides (i.e., culturally right-wing and economically left-wing, unmoored to traditionalism or civic virtue, constrained in its vision of human life but unconstrained in its vision of government and charismatic leaders, post-partisan/Third Way/hybrid politics, etc.). 

But I’m not going to make the case here that Vance is a fascist. I don’t know whether he is, and to be honest it doesn’t matter. Not everyone bad is a fascist. Vance and Trump both deserve to be hounded out of American political life, whether or not they meet the standard definition of the “F-word.” 

Meanwhile

One problem the Harris campaign has is its penchant for insulting the voters it needs to win over, rather than giving them reasons to join. Barack Obama recently insinuated that black men who are skeptical of Harris are sexists, and he tried to shame them into voting for her. I’m not black, but I do know that this is the kind of attitude which instinctively offends me, and I’m not alone. These comments strike me as more likely to cause black men who weren’t going to vote to vote for Trump than to vote for Harris. Obama’s Achilles heel was always his certainty that because he was smarter than everyone else around him, he could tell people he knew what their best interests were better than they do. Very few people react well to that pomposity. 

Trump Went on Joe Rogan

The other big news was Trump’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. I listened to all three hours. It started out slow, with Trump sounding tired, but quickly he picked up and was back to old form. I remembered why people like him. He’s funny sometimes, and he has an air of authenticity. It isn’t the way Rogan said: that Trump tells it straight and politicians lie. Trump lies. But he lies in a way that codes as emotionally honest, even if it isn’t. Politicians are cagey and try not to let themselves be pinned down, while Trump speaks bluntly and says “crazy s—t” as Rogan put it, which some people mistake for honesty. Even if his words aren’t honest, it feels like this is the real Trump. With Hillary, one never got the sense that this was the real her. 

Of course, as John Kelly and others who worked in the administration can remind us, that doesn’t mean this is the real Trump. He’s as fake as Bill Clinton, but like Slick Willie he gives off a vibe that convinces people he’s being genuine. 

Rogan and Trump talked about politics, entertainment, professional fighting, and a variety of random topics. As usual, Trump came off as obsessed with himself. Rogan gave him an opportunity to elaborate on the 2020 election, and he said that he won, that he would have won California if the ballots had been properly counted, and that there were books written about how fraudulent the 2020 election was. He cited Mollie Hemingway, whom I have never believed actually thinks the election was stolen, but who thinks her readers are suckers. 

Among other things, Trump said during the interview, “I love the farmers. They’re great. But they’re getting killed right now,” “I had an uncle who was a great genius, just like other members of my family,” and “I want to be a whale psychiatrist.” 

One narrative this interview should dispel is that Donald Trump is senile. Trump sounded older than he did in 2016. But he spoke for three hours about a wide range of subjects, from concrete to China to his time in television. At no point did he say anything like, “We beat Medicare.” (The “whale psychiatrist” line is funny taken out of context, but fit logically within the flow of the interview, and wasn’t meant literally.) Trump rambled, but not nearly as much as other guests on the JRE sometimes do. At one point, he appeared to forget whether he had played golf in the last couple months, which one could chalk up to short-term memory loss or more likely to the whirlwind of campaign season. Ask yourself how many times you went to the grocery store in the last two months. Most readers won’t know the answer. 

I do think Trump has lost a step, but I was surprised by his command over a wide range of facts and names. For three hours, he rambled into strange cul-de-sacs and spoke about a variety of subjects. He wasn’t much less coherent than Rogan’s average guest, and a good deal more coherent than some of them. 

It remains to be seen whether Vice President Harris will work something out with Rogan’s people, but it looks like she’s backed out for the time being. She wanted to control the format and questions, and naturally Rogan refused to allow that. If Harris could talk like a normal person for three hours, Rogan’s podcast might actually humanize her to many undecided voters. But I’m afraid she’s been a politician too long and she’s not capable of it. If anyone is struggling to understand why Harris isn’t doing better in the polls, this is one of the major reasons. Voters are tired of politicians who seem scripted and fake. 

Election Day 2024

Next Tuesday is election day, meaning that this is the last column before all votes are cast. It’s possible we will change our publishing schedule next week to accommodate the election, or it’s possible I will stay up late on election night and my copy will arrive in your inboxes on Wednesday afternoon. 

It’s possible we won’t even know on Wednesday who the winner is. For the sake of the country, I hope we do. If we think the past few months have been rough, a contested election could make the holidays very dark. 

I can confidently make one prediction: Trump will claim there was fraud and say the election was rigged against him. If he loses, he will say that he won. He will do this immediately, without any evidence, and his bootlickers will invent the evidence as necessary. If he wins, he will say he won by even more. 

I don’t know whether Harris will do the same. Some Democrats will. I suspect many Democratic voters will believe the election was unfair or stolen, as they did in 2000, 2004, and 2016. My hope is that Democratic leadership does not go along with such theories, but we will see. 

Whatever happens, buckle up. 

Coda – The Cringe Election

I was going to end there, but once again I am going to surpass my word count in order to add a concluding comment. News broke Monday that comedian Tony Hinchcliffe had managed to insult blacks, Hispanics, and Jews at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. Three demographic groups Trump is trying to perform better with this year. Perhaps he labored under the theory that calling Puerto Rico a “floating garbage patch” is a good strategy to win the Puerto-Rican vote. Comedy has always been filled with cringy envelope-pushing, but the most damning part for Tony Hinchcliffe is that his comments weren’t even funny. People will forgive a lot if you can make them laugh. If you haven’t read what Hinchcliffe said, please do so. There will be those who tell us not to be thin-skinned snowflakes about it, because alpha males like Donald Trump don’t have time for manners and niceties, but this is the kind of fool thing a bootlicker says when trying to come up with a way to explain how America needs a draft-dodging adulterer to reinvigorate Christian virtue. 

Speaking of cringe, Harris let herself be “accidentally” recorded talking about her trouble appealing to manly men, and in doing so demonstrated why she has trouble. Meanwhile, Tim Walz played a video game with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, because the cool kids play video games these days. 

And that’s really the story of this race. Both candidates are embarrassing. Neither advances conservative principles in any meaningful way. Either way, we’ll be disappointed next week.

Ben Connelly is a writer, long-distance runner, former engineer, and author of “Grit: A Practical Guide to Developing Physical and Mental Toughness.” He publishes short stories and essays at Hardihood Books. @benconnelly6712